Diversity on House Financial Services

The eight Republicans who will join the House Financial Services Committee next year include a former ambassador to Luxembourg, a farmer and the founder of a real estate company.

But despite their varying backgrounds, they share common goals for the panel: scaling back Dodd-Frank, protecting community banks and taking on housing reform.

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The incoming members struck an optimistic note that there can be bipartisan cooperation on the panel. But they also expressed little interest in meeting Democrats in the middle on some of the more contentious financial regulatory issues.

What follows are excerpts of interviews with seven of the incoming GOP members — Rep.-elect Andy Barr of Kentucky declined to be interviewed — about their backgrounds and goals for the committee:

Rep. Randy Hultgren of Illinois

Hultgren says he’s had plenty of practice to prepare himself for a committee that has the reputation for partisan gridlock.

“I served on a couple of committees that have always been thought of as very bipartisan and where things move quickly — the Agriculture and Transportation committees — and we struggled there as well to get bills through,” he said.

“So it doesn’t surprise me that Financial Services also had struggles and some very strong differences in opinion of what the role of federal government ought to be in our banking system and in finance,” he added.

Hultgren, a former investment adviser who was first elected to Congress in 2010, is set to join the panel as several of its Illinois Republicans, including Reps. Judy Biggert and Robert Dold, depart the committee after failing to win reelection.

Like many of his Republican colleagues, Hultgren says one of his major goals is to scale back regulations conservatives contend will paralyze financial institutions.

“I have my strong opinions, but I’m not going to come in saying, ‘I’ll never do this.’ I want to look and see,” he said. “I’m not going to shut down and say, ‘I’ll never look at a compromise.’”

Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina

The conservative South Carolina Republican says he regrets not being able to have one of the committee’s most outspoken liberals — Barney Frank — serving alongside him on the panel next year.

“My big disappointment is that Mr. Frank is leaving because I know him and I know that I could have worked with him. And I’m sure that if I could work with him, I know that [Chairman-elect] Jeb [Hensarling R-Texas] could,” he said.

Of Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the incoming ranking member, he said, “I don’t know Ms. Waters that well … it’ll be very interesting to see the tone that she sets in the first couple of meetings. I hope that it’s not intransigent. I hope it’s not going to be the politics of obstruction.”

Mulvaney, who ran a family real estate business before starting a home-building company, says he’s committed to working with Hensarling on what is expected to be one of the incoming chairman’s top priorities: GSE reform.

“Even if you talk to folks like Mr. Frank, they recognize the fact that these systems are broken,” he said. “That’s the important first step — for everybody to acknowledge that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, [and the Federal Housing Administration] cannot continue in their current form forever.”